The polls are about to close in the Eastern US, and early results will start to trickle in soon afterwards, but exit polls are out, and they're not good for the Republicans. The Democrats are leading in all three key Senate races (Virginia 52 - 47, Montana 53 - 46, Missouri 50 - 48), though the lead in Missouri isn't significant enough to be celebrating yet. Unfortunately, it looks like they'll lose in Arizona, and in Tennessee (racism apparently being a reliable tactic down there). The other good news is that turnout in Virginia may be a historic high for a midterm election. If its reflected across the country, then it means both good news for US democracy, and probably bad news for the Republicans.
Salon has a good guide to how to watch the elections, and while they're not being broadcast here, it's still useful for watching over the web. As for where to watch, the New York Times will have full results (with an easy to use interface) here.
Meanwhile, the Public Address System has a thread in the Cafe for those who want to watch and comment here.
Update: The Salon piece linked above gives a rough benchmark for measuring Democrat success:
The Democrats will be heading for an epic House sweep, if, by 8 p.m., they have won three GOP-held Indiana seats, at least one in Kentucky, one in New Hampshire, one in Virginia (if Phil Kellam knocks off Thelma Drake in the 2nd District) and a minimum of three in Ohio. That new math would give the Democrats nine new House seats -- leaving them just six pickups around the country short of making Nancy Pelosi speaker.
The results have been slower to come in, but according to theNew York Times results page, as of 10:15pm EST, the Dems have indeed won 3 in Indiana and one in Kentucky 9and are neck-in-neck on another), and are highly likely to win one in New Hampshire (the other being neck in neck) - but have fallen short in Virginia. Ohio isn't looking so good either - they'll get OH-18, and are running neck in neck (literally - 81% counted and only 110 votes between the candidates) in OH-15. So, pretty good so far, but maybe not the "epic House sweep" we were hoping for.
The Senate isn't looking so good - Webb trails Allen by 1.3% in Virginia, with 89% counted, Ford is well behind in Tennessee, and early results from Missouri show the Republicans with a clear lead. Clearly, US exit polls aren't worth the bits they're written with...
Update 2: And the Democrats win the House. Bring on the checks and balances!
6 comments:
Note that you can sign up to a free 14-day trial of CNN Pipeline, which has pretty comprehensive coverage of them - four streams at a time. It's pretty good, but bandwidth-heavy.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/08/2006 01:11:00 PM
There is also an MSNBC direct feed.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/08/2006 03:16:00 PM
And election night is being live-blogged by two former congressional pages over here:
http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/cc_indecider/index.html
Bless Comedy Central and almost all who sail in her.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/08/2006 03:19:00 PM
The funny thing is that people think there's a signficant difference between the Democrats & the Republicans ...
What I'd be interested to see is how the minor parties are doing, but those stats seem to be a little thin on the ground through lack of interest.
Posted by Duncan Bayne : 11/08/2006 03:47:00 PM
CNN's election page has blanket results, for every candidate, including the exit polls and breakdowns.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/08/2006 04:21:00 PM
Looks like they'll get the Senate too. I'm loving it. Duncan, you can be as cynical as you like about a lack of difference between the parties, but even if they are to the right of National or even ACT, the Democrats are a heck of a long way to the left of the GOP. Also, we are in a time of increasing transparancy and accelerating chage. The old maxims no longer apply. Essentially the Democratic "netroots" are vastly more participative and empowered than their old "grassroots", and they will keep the buggers honest. Sure, it would be nice if they changed from an FPP system so that 3rd parties had more than a whelks chance in a supernova, but regardless, today is a great day.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/09/2006 09:39:00 AM
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